Pirates 6 — Add a component

In the previous lesson, you detected a cannonball hit. But at the moment, nothing happens when a ship gets hit by a cannonball.

In this lesson you’ll:

• create a component to store the ship’s health
• add this component to players’ ships and to pirate ships
• reduce a ship’s health when it gets hit by a cannonball

1. Create the Health component

In lesson 4, you extended an existing component: ShipControls. But now, you want to add a brand new component: one that stores the health of a ship.

1.1. Define the new component

1. In the schema/improbable/ship directory, create a schema file called Health.

2. Add the following contents:

   package improbable.ship;
   
   component Health {
       // Component ID. Must be unique within the project.
       id = 1006;
   
       int32 current_health = 1;
   }
   

   This defines a component called Health. It has a single property, current_health.

   id = 1006 sets the ID for the Health component. Every component needs an ID that is unique within the project.

   int32 current_health = 1 defines a property of type int32, called current_health, with the ID 1. Every property needs an ID that is unique within its component.

   In the future, you could add other values associated with health to this component, like maximum health, or health regeneration rate.

   1.2. Generate the schema code

   Every time you change the schema, you need to regenerate the generated code:

   1. In Unity, in the SpatialOS window, click Build, then under Generate from schema, click Build.

   This generates code that workers can use to read and modify the Health component, and allows SpatialOS to synchronize components across the system.

   If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to use a Health.Writer in the next step, because that code won’t exist.

   It’s done when: you see 'sdk codegen' succeeded printed in your console output.

   2. Extend the PlayerShip template

   The player’s ship is put together using an entity template, which lists all the components that the entity has. You created a new entity template in lesson 2. This time, you’re just going to extend templates that already exist, by:

   • adding the Health component
   • specifying which workers can write to Health

   2.1. Add the Health component to the template

   1. In the Unity project editor, navigate to the Gamelogic/EntityTemplates directory.
   2. Open the script EntityTemplateFactory.cs.
      

   The CreatePlayerShipTemplate() method specifies which components the player entity has. These are currently Rotation, ClientConnection, ShipControls and ClientAuthorityCheck:

   .AddComponent(new Rotation.Data(0), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   .AddComponent(new ClientConnection.Data(SimulationSettings.TotalHeartbeatsBeforeTimeout), CommonRequirementSets.PhysicsOnly)
   .AddComponent(new ShipControls.Data(0, 0), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   .AddComponent(new ClientAuthorityCheck.Data(), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   

3. Extend the template by adding the Health component (with an initial value of 1000) to the playerEntityTemplate, so CreatePlayerShipTemplate now has these lines:

   .AddComponent(new Rotation.Data(0), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   .AddComponent(new ClientConnection.Data(SimulationSettings.TotalHeartbeatsBeforeTimeout), CommonRequirementSets.PhysicsOnly)
   .AddComponent(new ShipControls.Data(0, 0), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   .AddComponent(new ClientAuthorityCheck.Data(), CommonRequirementSets.SpecificClientOnly(clientWorkerId))
   .AddComponent(new Health.Data(1000), CommonRequirementSets.PhysicsOnly)
   

   Health.Data was generated when you generated code. If you can’t find Health.Data, you may have missed the earlier step to regenerate the generated code after modifying your schema.

   You want only the UnityWorker, on the server side, to be able to modify the player’s health. We don’t want to allow clients to increase their own health!

   3. Extend the PirateShip template

   You also want enemy pirate ships to have health (so you can damage them). This is very similar to what you just did for the PlayerShip, so here’s just a short overview:

   1. Still in EntityTemplateFactory.cs, go to the CreatePirateEntityTemplate() method.

   2. At the end of the section with var playerCreatorEntityTemplate = EntityBuilder.Begin(), add a new line just before .Build();:

   .AddComponent(new Health.Data(1000), CommonRequirementSets.PhysicsOnly)
   

This adds the Health component to the entity, and gives the UnityWorker (the “physics worker”) write access.

4. Reduce the ship’s health when a cannonball hits it

Now that ships have health, you can use this concept in TakeDamage.cs.

1. In the Unity Editor, navigate to the Assets/Gamelogic/Pirates/Behaviours directory.
2. Open the script TakeDamage.cs.

3. Add the following import, which gives this script access to the code generated for Health:

   using Improbable.Ship;
   

   1. You only want TakeDamage.cs enabled on a prefab if the worker can write to the Health component. Use the [Require] annotation to do this:

   public class TakeDamage : MonoBehaviour
   {
       // Enable this MonoBehaviour only on the worker with write access for the entity's Health component
       [Require] private Health.Writer HealthWriter;
   

4. Unity’s OnTriggerEnter() runs even if the MonoBehaviour is disabled, so non-authoritative UnityWorkers must be protected against null writers. To do this, add the following at the start of OnTriggerEnter():

   private void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
   {
       if (HealthWriter == null)
           return;
   

   1. You don’t want to do anything with a collision with a ship that’s already dead. So below the previous check, add another check.

   Use HealthWriter.Data to check the value of currentHealth:

   if (HealthWriter.Data.currentHealth <= 0)
       return;
   

5. After these checks, you can write the code to actually reduce the ship’s health. You should do this inside the existing check that asserts whether the collision was with a cannonball. Let’s say reduce the currentHealth by 250 when a cannonball hits.

   In lesson 3, you used a Writer to send an update of a property. This is very similar:

   if (other != null && other.gameObject.tag == "Cannonball")
   {
       // Reduce health of this entity when hit
       int newHealth = HealthWriter.Data.currentHealth - 250;
       HealthWriter.Send(new Health.Update().SetCurrentHealth(newHealth));
   }
   

   When you’re done, TakeDamage.cs should look something like this:

   using Improbable.Ship;
   using Improbable.Unity;
   using Improbable.Unity.Visualizer;
   using UnityEngine;
   
   namespace Assets.Gamelogic.Pirates.Behaviours
   {
   // Add this MonoBehaviour on UnityWorker (server-side) workers only
   [WorkerType(WorkerPlatform.UnityWorker)]
   public class TakeDamage : MonoBehaviour
   {
       // Enable this MonoBehaviour only on the worker with write access for the entity's Health component
       [Require] private Health.Writer HealthWriter;
           
       private void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
       {
           /*
            * Unity's OnTriggerEnter runs even if the MonoBehaviour is disabled, so non-authoritative UnityWorkers
            * must be protected against null writers
            */
           if (HealthWriter == null)
               return;
   
           // Ignore collision if this ship is already dead
           if (HealthWriter.Data.currentHealth <= 0)
               return;
   
           if (other != null && other.gameObject.tag == "Cannonball")
           {
               // Reduce health of this entity when hit
               int newHealth = HealthWriter.Data.currentHealth - 250;
               HealthWriter.Send(new Health.Update().SetCurrentHealth(newHealth));
           }
       }
   }
   }
   

5. Build the changes

1. Regenerate the default snapshot: Use the menu Improbable > Snapshots > Generate Default Snapshot.

   You need to do this because you added a new component to entities in the snapshot. If you don’t, when you run the game, PirateShips won’t have the Health component.

2. Build worker code: In the SpatialOS window, click Build, then under Workers, click Build.

6. Check it worked

To test these changes, run the game locally:

1. In the SpatialOS window, under Run SpatialOS locally, click Run.
2. Run a client (open the scene UnityClient.unity, then click Play ▶).

3. Find another ship, and press E or Q to fire a cannon at it.

4. Open the Inspector.

5. Inspect the entity of the ship you hit by clicking on its icon in the main Inspector window.

6. The bottom right area of the Inspector shows you the entity’s components.

   Find the property called currentHealth in the improbable.ship.Health component:

It’s done when: You can see ship’s health is less than 1000.

To stop spatial local launch running, switch to the terminal window and use Ctrl + C.

Deploying to the cloud

So far in the Pirates tutorial, you’ve always run your game locally. But there’s an alternative: running in the cloud. This has some advantages, including making it much easier to test multiplayer functionality.

To try out deploying to the cloud, try the optional lesson Play in the cloud.

Lesson summary

In this lesson, you:

• created the component Health
• when a ship is hit by a cannonball, reduced the ship’s currentHealth.

What’s next?

At the moment, a ship’s currentHealth can fall to 0 - but nothing happens visually.

In the next lesson, you’ll trigger a sinking animation on the Unity Client when a ship’s current_health reaches zero.

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